THE RELEASE: We here at Label Fantastic! are pleased to announce that our dear friend Dr. Henry Adam Svec has once again unleashed a piece of Canadian musical history, under the title: ” LIVINGSTON – Artificially intelligent Folk Songs of Canada Vol. 1″ .  While Henry’s last release  ”Folk songs of Canada now” saw him collecting renditions and reinterpretations of our Canadian songs of old, Henry is now MAKING history, playing a key role in the development a folk-music -creating-super-machine.    We’ve listed some more information about “LIVINGSTON”  at the bottom of this post.   You can download the album for free (or purchase with a donation) here: http://www.folksingularity.com/   Henry will be doing a series of presentations throughout February and March, and joining him on a number of the shows will be Jenny (Omnichord) Mitchell with her new tenor guitar/banjo project “Bird City”.  Jenny has been working on the songs of Bird City over the course of the last fifteen years, always pushing the project to the side.  But she has recently kicked it into gear – read a bit more about her project here

Here are the LIVINGSTON show dates (# marks the shows joined by Bird City):

# Feb 12th @ Art Bar, Hamilton, ON (in Folk Roots Stew) # Feb 13th @ Cafe Pyrus, Kitchener, ON (in Folk Roots Stew) # Feb 15th @ Bicycle Cafe, Flesherton, ON # Feb 19th @ The Cornerstone, Guelph, ON Feb 21st @ Raw Sugar Cafe, Ottawa, ON Feb 22nd @ The Artel, Kingston, ON Feb 23rd @ Casa Del Popolo, Montreal, QC #* March 6th @ Tranzac Main Hall, Toronto, ON March 7th @ NORTH BAY ONTARIO, venue TBA March 28th @ Forest City Gallery, London, ON (with Olenka Krakus and some other folks TBA) # with Bird City! * For March 6th show, Henry will be joined by the Vol. 1 Band!

THE KARAOKE- Jenny and her karaoke loving friends the “Golden Throats” have started a bi-weekly karaoke night at the ANAF in Guelph Ontario.  But it is not simply your basic selection of classic mainstream super hits – The Golden Throats are collecting and programming a catalogue of “Indie Rock karaoke”.  The catalogue is already pushing 100 songs, and is growing with each event.  The current collection includes such artists as Jim Guthrie, Wax Mannequin, Shotgun Jimmie, Constantines, the Burning Hell, and Great Lake Swimmers.  Interested in having your songs turned into karaoke?  Well I bet WE’RE interested in that too.  For more info, event dates and to get in touch,  check out their facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/goldenthroats

MUSIC VIDEOS: Blimp Rock, Jenny Omnichord and Esther Grey have posted some pretty incredible music videos over the past little while.  So here are some links!

Blimp Rock: “The Love that Treats you Right”  http://vimeo.com/81965145

Jenny Omnichord: “…and in the Cold”  https://www.youtube.com/watc

h?v=1pdY2lb3K1A

Esther Grey: “The Body of a Healer”   https://vimeo.com/49453381

Don’t forget to like all these folks on their respective facebook pages!  It’s the best way to stay up to date, and plus it helps them with things like grant applications.  Handy things, those’likes’

Now: More about LIVINGSTON:

Featuring work produced by the sentient database LIVINGSTON, Artificially Intelligent Folk Songs of Canada, Vol. 1 is the culmination of years of research in both Canadian folklore and computer science. What if we had a digital machine that could access the entirety of Canadian folk music and generate new yet hyper-authentic compositions from the source data? Thanks to this exciting collaboration between Canadian song collector Dr.Henry Adam Svec (The CFL Sessions, Folk Songs of Canada Now) and Czech programmer Mirek Plíhal (Všechny Milí Lidé), there is no longer any need to wonder.

An intelligent archive is already an achievement. Yet, LIVINGSTON only producestranscriptions of words and melodies, and so our engineers also needed to put together a band. Fronted by Svec himself and featuring Misha Bower (Bruce Peninsula), Marshall Bureau (Octoberman, The Pinecones), J.J. Ipsen (Hayden, Jim Guthrie), Andrew Penner (Sunparlour Players), and more, these human musicians have breathed life into LIVINGSON’s brilliantly cold calculations; from rough hollers and stomps to smooth-country croons, from the sparse sounds of the field to the sparkle of Andy Magoffin’s House of Miracles Studio, Artificially Intelligent Folk Songs of Canada, Vol. 1 documents the limits and possibilities of Canadian folksong—a record as wide and as varied as our land and/or the internet.

Download the music for free or for money via www.folksingularity.com, where you can also access tour dates and the FAQ, and stay tuned for Vol. 2 (sung by Olenka Krakus) and Vol. 3 (sung by Mathias Kom).

Facebook links:

https://www.facebook.com/JennyOmnichord

https://www.facebook.com/wax.mannequin?fref=ts

https://www.facebook.com/theburninghell

https://www.facebook.com/BlimpRock

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Esther-Grey/262714637143789

https://www.facebook.com/jennybirdcity

https://www.facebook.com/theskeletonesfour

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Richard-Laviolette/155130974503469

https://www.facebook.com/goldenthroats